JULIAN McKENNY


PHOTOGRAPHY


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A selection of work from recent, long-term and ongoing projects.



PROJECTS



About A Place



Several bodies of work made over the last ten years in response to re-locating to rural West Wales, setting up a market garden and building a straw bale house, which are in part about working in the same location repeatedly, working with

the familiar and not constantly seeking out novelty ...



A New Normal - Work During Lockdown



A group of projects undertaken during lockdown including Patterns of Empire - an examination of appropriated decoration, Quantum Entanglements - photographic drawings reflecting on the Tweets of Donald Trump, My First Still Life - a self-portrait in objects and Biblical Still Lives - collaged found and made images.



Seagulls Made Me Do It



Memories of seaside holidays, of long hot journeys, the strangeness of arrival, of static caravans, caravan parks, B&B's, the contrary weather, of details and connections, of boredom and tantrums ...



The Event



A group of hedge-fund billionaires asked Professor Douglas Rushkoff where they should locate their domesday bunkers to be safe from climate change and other life changing events. The talk soon turned to how they might maintain control of their compounds: could they use control collars on the guards? This tragic tale of mis-used wealth and privilege has fed into my collage work on climate catastrophe.



Phases of the Moon



Assemblages using mixed media, found materials and objects, acrylic paint, wood stain, pencil, wire, nylon twine from seashore. Responding to the traditional names for the full moon I have made a series of assemblages combining painted and found elements which follow a similar structure of a cross with a found object acting as a pendulum.



Use of Land



Works on paper looking at the loss of farmland and the market gardens that once fed the cities and towns of Britain as out of town shopping developments and their attendant infrastructure of road networks erases the past in favour of a future reliant on transportation and just-in-time importation of fresh produce.



Backs



The hidden corners of towns and streets that exist almost beyond our sight, neglected and ignored, unfamiliar despite their familiarity. We always look at the fronts, why not the backs?



Dolmen



West Wales is famous for its Dolmen and Cromlechs - burial chambers such as Pentre Ifan with its capstones balanced precariously on upright slabs. These are my experiments with self-supporting constructions that echo these ancient monuments.



Taking Sides



Build the wall, build the wall. To keep us in or you out. The grass is always greenest just beyond, just out of reach. Nation States and the state of nations. More experiments in self-supporting sculptures.



Inland



The human flavour of places and their off-kilter quirks, a visual poem of oddities and occurrences, of temporal accumulations, of old-fashioned-ness, of unimportant events and overlooked edges.



Sharing Simon's Point of View



Artist Simon Whitehead co-curated and participated in the Basic Human Needs exhibition we held and shared a sound-piece in a chicken shed which overlooked the Frenni Fawr. Afterwards I made images which attempt to understand and share his nature based approach as an artist.



No Parking



In common with archived work such as Dog Bags or Bags In Trees, the No Parking series are also typologies that allow me to make landscape photographs that use a recurring motif as an anchor to break visual habits.



The Weaver Navigations



The Weaver Navigation is a canalised stretch of the River Weaver which runs through Cheshire and on to the Potteries.



A Pinch of Salt



An off-shoot edit of The Weaver Navigations.



Another Kind of World



"Photography can be a mirror and reflect life as it is. But I also think it is possible to walk like Alice through the looking glass, observe the puzzles in one's head and discover another kind of world with a camera." Tony Ray-Jones 1968



Despicable Lies



We have entered a time of chaos and instability, where the euphemisms of capitalism are being stretched to breaking point as our governments become ever-more corrupted. Desperate to retain power, they have helped turn our society into one of disaffected consumer puppets, raddled by greed, uncaring of others, fearful of everything real.



Pleasureland



Pleasureland and New Pleasures bear witness to the declining fortunes of our coastal attractions and show the sometimes desperate efforts to keep ailing businesses running. Simple Pleasures celebrates spending time beside the sea and gently observes and, hopefully, shares those pleasures.



Ten Poles



This is a measurement of length for standard allotments. The images are a memory of my time as an allotment holder on a large site at the border of Levenshulme and Reddish in south Manchester.



Dog Bags



Dog Bags echo our best intentions – we want to do the right thing but only manage to go half-way. We will pick that bag up on the way back, won’t we …
​



Shelter



These bivvys are flimsy and transient structures in Delamere Forest. Sometimes days are bright and sunny, the forest seems cheerful and peaceful. Other days are overcast, damp, unrelenting and the shelters seem unthinkable, the forest dark and threatening. How many are ever slept in is unclear – the better made ones are created by school children at Fox Howl Outdoor Education Centre. At the end of the day they are destroyed ready for the next class.



Winter Landscapes



My reaching middle age coincided with the death of my father and the completion of my MA. I had a definite feeling of mortality, of cup half empty rather than half full. These bleak and emptied 'winter landscapes' are an attempt to reflect that sense of loss.



The Day Is Past And Over



More middle-aged miserableness, triggered by finding a song sheet in a skip and viewing derelict properties and small-holdings as we searched for land. There was always a sense of lives lived, of generations, of lifetimes left in limbo.



Attend



Every hour of every day, in digital flat screen wide screen, free to view, impossible to avoid, our western way of life is reinforced by the steady push of media. Attend.



Rhys Reece Rees



Collaborative, socially engaged work as part of the duo RhysReeceRees. This link will take you to the Vegetable Agenda website.



Vegetable Agenda



From the Vegetable Agenda website:

"Welcome to Vegetable Agenda, an artist/grower led initiative in Pembrokeshire, Wales. We are working towards making the land a resource for artists and the local community, encouraging engagement with aspects of sustainable living and food production, including collaborative projects and events, residencies and involvement in land-based activities."



Archived Work



Older projects and oddities



As if there wasn't already enough on this website, here is some more ...



JULIAN McKENNY



PHOTOGRAPHY